Guarding Prisoners During the Gettysburg Campaign

   The June 1863 battle of Winchester was a resounding Confederate victory and a good start to the Gettysburg campaign. Confederate forces under Richard Ewell were assigned the job of capturing or pushing out the 6,900 Federals garrisoning in and around Winchester, Virginia. The Federal force was under the command of Gen. Robert Milroy. One historian writes that the Federal soldiers, largely from Ohio and West Virginia, “had done little since their enlistments but guard duty on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and their fortifications were badly suited to resist a determined attack.”[1] 

Richard Ewell 

   Milroy believed that the gathering Confederate forces south of him were merely staging for a cavalry raid. When news arrived that a large Confederate force had near by, it was really too late to escape. The Confederates broke through the outer defenses on the evening of June 14, and Milroy ordered a retreat that began at 2:00 am the next morning. Four miles from Winchester, Milroy ran into Confederate forces at Stephenson’s Depot. It was an “ambush cleverly laid by Ewell.”[2] Leading the ambush were the three brigades under Allegheny Johnson. After three failed attempts to break through the Confederate lines, Milroy ordered his regiments  to each “leave to look out for itself, and what had once been Milroy’s command broke up in desperately fleeing fragments.”[3]

   Based upon returns from the Federal regiment, the loses were approximately 3,856 captured, although it is unclear just who was captured in Winchester and who was captured at Stephenson’s Depot. The heaviest-hit were the 67^th Pennsylvania Infantry, losing 714 men, the 18^th Connecticut, with 513 men captured, and the 123^rd Ohio, losing 445 men captured.[4]

   Following the battle, the prisoners were marched to the recently captured Federal forts. It would take several days to move all of the prisoners to Richmond. On June 16, captured Federals began to make the trip to Richmond. They, with their guards, would travel over 200 miles, part of it on foot, and part via rails. The 58^th Virginia and the 54^th North Carolina were assigned the task of escorting the prisoners. Colonel Francis H. Board, 58^th Virginia, addressed the guards: “Men, these Yankees have fallen into our hands by the fortune of war. I want them treated like gentlemen. If I hear of any insults or abuse, it will be punished.” The men would walk from Winchester to Staunton, where they boarded the cars to Richmond. According to one Federal, it took six days, from June 18 to June 24, to reach Staunton.[5]

   The Federals often had harsh words about their captors and the citizens they met. The chaplain of the 12^th Pennsylvania Cavalry complained that turnpike seemed to burn and blister his feet. “Half-clad, many shoeless and hatless and unfed, the cavalcade was a sorrowful one. The sufferings of the trip I cannot express. Nothing to eat but what we begged or bought off citizens who hated us intensely, shut their doors in our face, and from appearances would have been far better pleased with a visit from even his Satanic majesty himself. Indeed, unless the guard had [not] interfered in our behalf, we should have fared very badly.”[6] A captain in the 123^rd Ohio was even harsher, writing that during the march to Staunton, “we were necessitated, by our unfortunate condition as prisoners of war, to submit to the most contemptible treatment, and outrageous insults, that an enraged and diabolical enemy could heap upon us. This detestable treatment was not confined, neither was it most rampant among the soldier guards; but the citizens outrivaled even the soldiers in the exhibition of hate and virulence. They seemed to take great intense delight in hurling their anathemas upon us with unmitigated fury, such as ‘d----d Yankees,’ Milroy’s thieves and robbers,’ ‘black abolitionists,’ ‘every one of you, out to be hung,’ &c. &c.” Of course, some vitriol might be expected. But at one point, the colonel of the 58^th Virginia asked if their were any musicians among the Federals captives. When the answer was yes, he ordered them to the front, provided them with a fife and drum, and allowed them to play what ever airs they wanted, which included “Yankee Doodle” and “The Star Spangled Banner.”[7]

   David Parker, 54^th North Carolina, was one of those detailed to guard the prisoners. He wrote home that his column contained 2,200 Federal prisoners. “We had to march ninety two miles by land to Stanton. It took us five days. . . I tell you that we have had a hard time getting them here [Richmond]. We scarcely got to sleep any on the road. We had to stand guard two hours and only sleep two hours through the night and then march hard the next day.” On arriving in Staunton, the prisoners were placed in the cars, fifty per car. The guards were likewise divided up. Parker was assigned to continue the trip on to Richmond. “They then detailed twenty eight out of our regt to guard seven hundred of them to Richmond. We left Staunton a Tuesday evening about half an hour by sun and landed here the next evening.”[8] The Federal officers were sent to Libby Prison, while the enlisted men were sent to first to Castle Thunder, and then to Belle Island.

   The almost 4,000 men captured during the second battle of Winchester are not often counted as Confederates captured during the Gettysburg campaign. As Gettysburg concluded, General Lee placed “several thousand” Federal prisoners in charge of Maj. Gen. George Pickett, with orders to escort these men back to Virginia.[9] Kent Masterson Brown places the number at 4,000.[10] Stephen Sears places the number at 3,800.[11] If coupled with the 1,300 that Lee had paroled, and the couple of hundred that JEB Stuart had captured and paroled, the number of Federal soldiers captured during the Gettysburg  campaign probably came close to 10,000.

   If you are interested in this part of the Gettysburg Campaign, let me highly recommend The Second
Battle of Winchester: The Confederate Victory that Opened the Door to Gettysburg (Savas Beatie, 2016) by Eric J. Wittenberg and Scot L. Mingus, Jr. It is a fantastic book at this overlooked part of the history of the war.

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[1] Guelzo, Gettysburg, 60.

[2] Coddington, Gettysburg, 89.

[3] Guelzo, Gettysburg, 62.

[4] ORs, Vol. 27, pt.  2, 53.

[5] Wittenburg and Mingus, The Second Battle of Winchester, 379.

[6] Wittenburg and Mingus, The Second Battle of Winchester, 385.

[7] Wittenburg and Mingus, The Second Battle of Winchester, 382-383.

[8] Henry, Pen in Hand, 91.

[9] Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 354.

[10] Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg, 177.

[11] Sears, Gettysburg, 479.